The St. Johns herald., 1887-03-03
CURIOUS ATTEMPTS AT FRAUD.
Hard Cases With Which Life Insurance
 Companies Have to Deal,

 Hard Cases With Which Life Insurance
 Companies Have to Deal.
 GA number of curious instances of attempts to defraud life insurance con- panies werc related at the recent con- yention held in Boston of & number of companies" said the attorney of well-known life insurance company to a reporter for the Mail and Express.
 "One was of Q man in Catskill, N. T., who made application for si0,0Go insurance for the benefit of himself and obtained it, and shortly aft 'rwaris obtained an accident policy or S5,G3J ir New England company.
 |" I can best give the story in the lGn- guage of the gentleman who told it and in whose company the SIC, eco policy was obtained.
 e" The first we heard of tho casc,' he said, was a telegram that tEe ic- sured re:errci to had been drOwned. My cz3ericnce in insurance has led me to look with suspicion upon all accidental or mysterious disappearances.
 "' We therefore sent an agent to Cat skill, who reported that the party, il company with his brother and a boy, had been out fishing at Il o'clock at night in the Catskill creek, near is confluence with the Hudson river, and that he took an oar to ascertain the depth of the water, lost his balance and fell overheard.
 ." Search was made for the body by the citizens of the town in tEe waters Of the Hudson, while we were searching for the body on land.
 |" It would be tedious to tell you the sl1illful work it required; suffice it to say that VIC found the would-be corpse in Cleveland, Ohio, and on his person found a correspondence written ill ci- pher, and also key to it, which dis closed an infamous conspiracy
 '' A case told by the representative of another company showed how an agent tried to secure money fraudulently from a company.
 "The insurance was effected through an application presented in the name of James w. Heirs, of Norfolk, Virginia. The agent sent on the application. It was perfectly clear.
 "Thc men who had been examined stood six feet one inch and weighed 190 pounds. His measurements were cor rect. Thoexamination was made by one of the fne5t and best physicians in the city of Norfolk and the certificate was of course written.
 Through the custom which had been adopted by the association of local treas urci5, receipt was forwarded for the collection of the annual dues to the local treasurer, at the same time that the policy was sent to the agent.
 |" The local treasurer reported back to tho home office that he could not find any such man as James w. Heirs; thcrc was a man by that name who lad livel there in the November previous, th;j application being made to the as- sociGt.cn the latter part of February. some five months after tLe Gecease of the party insured.
 "Tho beneficiary under the policy was Q friend of the agent, the parry whom ho had substituted at the time of making the examination, to whom tht money was to be paid in trust r the widow. He was also mentioned in the application as one of the friends of the applicant. A fictitious set of proofs wcro in all probability to be presentel to tho association in sixty or ninety days or four months. by tho friend of the agont, making the claim for the money. which would havo been paid to him, if the coml any had l ot investigated the matter, in trust for the widow, who never would have heard of 1t.
 "She was satisfied before her husband died, in November, that he had ob- tained some insurance in somo company, and probably these two men who put up th.s job had insured this man in some other company, making the policy payable in some manner to themselves and had received the amount of tho insurance.
 Another class of frauds upon us are people who have cancers and know it.
 [" A typical case of the kind was dis covered last summer. The man who had the cancer obtained 1000 insur- ance on his life.
 "On investigation 1t was found that he had been suffering from 1t for five years and that he had been treated thirteen years before and had been on inmate of hospital.
 "It was also found in the investigation that twenty-two different physicians had treated the man, although in his application to the company no was the answer given to the question whether he had been treated by any physician within five years. The cer- ti1lcate was made payable to his cstatn and assigned to his wife. It was found that this woman knew the facts in the case"
 |" How about suicides?"
 In the Knights of Honor, two or three years ago, from 15 to 20 per cent of the death losses were from suicides.
 "They passed a resolution in their supreme body to prohibit the payment of claims from suicide, and their ex- perience has been since that time that they have not had one-quarter of the number of cases of suicide as be- l fore.
 Ut is a singular fact, as shown in | our experience, that persons intending | to commit suicide determine upon the | act so long beforehand and go about | it so deliberately. 30
 {" A recent case in point was a man | who came to the office of one of our companies and said that he wanted 1 to get insured. He was given a copy of | the company's certificate and went away. l The next day he returned and said that ] he did not like the suicide clause. He | was asked his reasons.
 "Hesaid he might go out hunting and 1 accidentally fall down, and get shot and 1 the company would claim that he com mitted suicide. So he thought he would look up some other company. A short time afterwards he committed suicide, and not while out hunting either"
 The Presidents Cane.
 Alaska has sent to Washincton a cane